Burnt Fen
Burnt Fen is an area of low-lying land crossed by the A1101 road between Littleport in Cambridgeshire and Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. It is surrounded on three sides by rivers, and consists of prime agricultural land, with sparse settlement. It is dependent on pumped drainage to prevent it from flooding.
Between 1759 and 1962 the area was managed by the Commissioners of the Burnt Fen First Drainage District, who were then replaced by the Burnt Fen Internal Drainage Board, when the area of responsibility was expanded. Funding for the drainage works is collected by a system of rates, paid by those whose property would be threatened by flooding without the works.
Location
Burnt Fen is located near the eastern borders of the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, although parts of it are also located in Suffolk and Norfolk. It is an area of prime agricultural land, which is mostly below sea level, and all of it is below the normal flood levels of the rivers which surround it on three sides. These comprise the River Great Ouse on the north western edge, the River Little Ouse on the north eastern edge and the River Lark on the south western edge. The area is crossed by the A1101 Littleport to Mildenhall road, which runs broadly north west to south east, and the Ely to Norwich Railway, which runs from east to west. There are four hamlets within this area, Little Ouse, Shippea Hill, Sedge Fen and Mile End. Shippea Hill railway station was called Burnt Fen between 1 April 1885 and 30 March 1904.Because of the low-lying nature of the terrain, the area is entirely dependent on pumped drainage to prevent it from being flooded. The Commissioners of the Burnt Fen First District were formed by act of Parliament, the Fen Drainage Act 1758, in 1759, and managed the drainage ditches and pumping stations until 1962, when the Burnt Fen Drainage District was expanded a little, and a new internal drainage board was constituted to manage the area. They are responsible for of land, which includes of drainage ditches and two pumping stations, one on the River Lark, and the other on the Great Ouse. Water flows along the drainage channels by gravity, and is then lifted by up to to enter the high level rivers.
The name "Burnt Fen" is believed to originate from the practice of levelling the land, which has been carried out since the mid 17th century. Large tufts of rushes, which made the land surface rough, were cut and dried. Once dried, they could be burnt, and the ashes used as fertiliser. This practice, known as paring and burning, was used widely in the Fens, and was advocated by Walter Blith in his book The English Improver Improved, published in 1652. He suggested that it should be used on the lowest levels of fen land which had been 'long drowned', and recorded details of the practical application of the process to an area of in the Bedford Level.
Archaeology
The area shows a remarkable amount of archaeological findings of the Mesolithic period. One of the largest hoards of Bronze-Age artefacts ever unearthed in western Europe was found near Isleham. Many of the 6,000 pieces are on show at the Moyses Hall Museum, located in Bury St Edmunds.History
Burnt Fen is part of the South Level of the Fens, and as such was judged to have been drained satisfactorily as a result of the work of the Dutch drainage engineer Cornelius Vermuyden and his Adventurers in 1652. The courses of a number of rivers had been altered to improve drainage and reclaim land for agriculture, and a thanksgiving service was held in Ely Cathedral to celebrate the event. Burnt Fen was a low-lying region surrounded on three sides by the River Great Ouse, the River Little Ouse, and the River Lark.From the beginning, there were tensions between those who wanted to use the rivers for navigation and those who wanted to use them for drainage, to the extent that when Denver Sluice was demolished by an extremely high tide in 1713, the towns of Cambridge and Thetford petitioned against its reconstruction. However, a more serious problem for the Burnt Fen area was the steady shrinkage of the land surface as the water was removed from the peat soils, and the blowing away of the light soil as it dried out. Water could no longer flow by gravity from the land into the rivers. Although the Bedford Level Corporation was responsible for the main rivers in the region, they did not have control of the smaller tributaries. Landowners could and did build windmills to act as drainage engines, but there was no overall policy, with the result that there were legal disputes, with one landowner complaining that a neighbour's drainage mill resulted in flooding of surrounding properties.
The first commissioners
Against this background, an act of Parliament was obtained, the ', which created two drainage districts. Each had its own set of commissioners, and the boards were called the Burnt Fen First District and the Burnt Fen Second District. The area controlled by the First District broadly covers the area known as Burnt Fen today, while the Second District is known as Lakenheath Little Fen. Besides notables such as the Lord Bishop of Ely and others, every person who owned of "taxable land" was a commissioner, and people who owned over of land could vote annually for several elected commissioners. "Taxable land" consisted of any land that might be affected by flooding, and would therefore benefit from drainage measures.The commissioners met for the first time on 6 June 1760, and planned the take-over of all of the drainage mills in the region, the construction of new ones, and the digging of the main drainage channels which would feed surface water to the mills and into the rivers. To finance these operations, there were empowered to borrow money, and to charge a drainage rate of 1 shilling per acre, rising to d after seven years. The costs of carrying out such work were grossly optimistic, and the commissioners were soon in financial difficulties. Despite this, and heavy flooding in the winter of 1761/2, which resulted in no taxes being collected, the commissioners owned eight mills by 1774, each of which used a scoop wheel to lift water into the rivers. The costs of maintenance and repair of the mills were high, not helped by the Naval shipbuilding programme driving up the cost of oak.
Part of the defence of the area involved the construction of a cross bank across its south eastern edge, to prevent flood water from the Lakenheath Little Fen reaching the Burnt Fen. The costs of building this were large, as were the costs of maintaining the river banks, and so a second act of Parliament, the Isle of Ely, etc. Act 1772 was obtained, authorising the raising of the drainage rate to 2 shillings per acre for ten years, and the imposing of penalties for late payment of the rates. A third act of Parliament, the ', was obtained, to raise the rates to d per acre, and kept them solvent for another eleven years. By 1807, they had borrowed £11,500 to finance the work, with little prospect of being able to pay it back. A fourth act of Parliament, the Isle of Ely Drainage Act 1807, increased the rates again, and changed the constitution of the commissioners.
Progress was not always smooth. Young, writing in 1794, recorded that there had been serious breaches of the banks in 1777, which had resulted in the ruin of many of the proprietors. However, a machine called the bear had been used to dredge the bottoms of the rivers, and in 1782, servants of the former proprietors had bought plots of land at reduced prices, which had proved to be profitable. He noted that one estate, bought for £200, could be sold for £2,000, following the completion of better banks and mills.
Mechanisation
Wind engines had the inherent design fault that they would only work when the wind blew, and could therefore be unusable when they were most needed. The commissioners therefore turned their attention to mechanising the pumping mills, and employed Mr. W. C. Mylne to advise them on the relative benefits of steam and gas engines in 1829. His report recommended the use of steam engines, and so a engine was ordered from Boulton Watt and Co., which would drive two scoop wheels. The engine cost £1,184, and the engine house another £836. It was installed where the Whitehouse Drain met the River Little Ouse, and was commissioned in 1832, when it became known as the Brandon Engine. There were initial teething problems, which resulted in one of the scoop wheels being removed, repairs to the boiler, and a second boiler being installed, but once these problems had been sorted out, it became obvious that the new system was an efficient way to drain the Fens.The Brandon Engine served the north part of the Fen, and the commissioners decided that a similar engine should serve the south of the District. Tenders were invited, and Boulton Watt and Co. again supplied a engine, this time with three boilers. The chosen location on the River Lark required the construction of the Engine Drain. Purchase of the land for the new drain was protracted, but once obtained, the engine was commissioned in 1842 and there were no significant teething problems. The Brandon Engine was thought to be worn out by 1848, and a new Cornish type boiler was fitted. Experiments were carried out to try to improve the lift and efficiency of the scoop wheels, as the land levels, and consequently the depth of the drains, continued to sink. Larger scoop wheels were fitted to the Brandon Engine in 1860, and to the Lark Engine shortly afterwards.
The financial standing of the Drainage District had steadily improved since the 1807 act of Parliament, and they were repaying the money borrowed in earlier years. A Fifth Burnt Fen act of Parliament was obtained, the , which recognised the damage done to river banks by horses and commercial traffic using them, and made provision for such use to be charged. The burden of repair costs to river banks was further lightened by an annual contribution from the Bedford Level Corporation, and also from the Turnpike Commissioners, who had built a road close to the course of the River Great Ouse on the north western edge of the Fen, although this latter sum proved difficult to obtain at times.
Under the acts of Parliament obtained in 1759, 1773, 1797, and 1807, two drainage districts had been set up, called the Burnt Fen First District and the Burnt Fen Second District. Re-organisation in 1879 resulted in the First District being renamed the Burnt Fen District, while the Second District became the Mildenhall District.